Meet some of the outstanding authors who call the Sunshine State home.

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Steph Post - Florida Noir

If you like your stories on the gritty side with offbeat,
unforgettable characters, there’s an author that you won’t want to miss. Tampa
Bay writer Steph Post, combines lyrical writing with a dysfunctional yet
vulnerable cast of players to take readers into a world they’ll like to visit
but probably wouldn’t want to live in. Brian Panowich, author of the acclaimed Bull Mountain, heralds Post as “the
official voice of working class literature in Florida, akin to what Daniel
Woodrell has done for Missouri, or Ron Rash for the Carolinas.”

Born in St. Augustine, Post claims to be “a tried and true
Florida native, not palm-tree-laden, fruity-tropical-shirt-and-sandals South
Florida, but backwoods-on-a-creek-deer-flies-and-alligator-ridden North Florida.”
She has also been a storyteller for as long as she can remember. “I used to drive
my mom crazy telling stories,” she recalls. “I especially loved creating
characters. Even as a kid, my stories always started with a character. It’s fun
and surprising for me to see what my characters will say and do.”

Post worked on her high school literary magazine and went on
to Davidson College in North Carolina on the Patricia Cornwell Scholarship for
creative writing. She graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in English and later earned
her Master’s degree from the University of North Carolina. For the past five
years, Post has been an English teacher/writing coach at Blake High School in
Tampa during the week and a novelist on the weekends.

It was during these weekend writing sessions that Post
completed her first novel, A Tree Born
Crooked. She had just moved back from North Carolina and wanted to write
about where she grew up. “The title actually came before the story,” she
explains. “I was kicking around characters with my husband, and he came up with
the title. It’s a line from a Tom Waits song. So I built a plot around a
character who was born crooked but still had to keep growing.” Post describes
the book as a combination of “Country Noir,” a genre that features hardboiled
rural stories, and the literary but gritty genre known as “Grit Lit.”

Since characterization is such an integral part of Post’s
writing, it isn’t surprising that the idea for A Tree Born Crooked grew out of a character concept. A big fan of the FX-TV series “Justified” and
Elmore Leonard’s novels, Post decided to center her tale around the stoic male
hero who has to go home and confront his past. This was the inspiration for the
book’s protagonist, James Hart, a character Post describes as “rugged yet
broken.” After receiving news of his father’s death, James reluctantly returns
to his backwater hometown of Crystal Springs where he is forced to revisit the
demons he’s tried desperately to leave behind. Post calls the novel “a balance
of hard and soft writing, juxtaposing gritty characters with lyrical, poetic
description.” Leonard Chang, one of the writers of “Justified,” praised the
book as “…compelling Florida grit with echoes of the late great Harry Crews…a
wonderful debut.”

Last month, her second novel, Lightwood, was released by Polis Books. In the same genre as A Tree Born Crooked, this new book is a
Southern literary crime thriller set in backwoods north-central Florida and
featuring hardscrabble, often eccentric characters, who must navigate a world
where right and easy rarely go hand in hand.
In Lightwood, these characters
are part of one of three factions: the notorious Cannon crime family, the
Scorpions outlaw motorcycle gang and the congregation of the Last Steps to
Deliverance Church of God. Judah Cannon and Sister Tulah, as well as players
from all sides, are tied together through a fateful heist of $150,000 that
leaves only brutality and hard choices in the complicated web of its wake.

Post’s weekends will be busy well into the future. She will
be doing book signings in bookstores across the state of North Carolina and will
be speaking at the Virginia Festival of the Book in March. She hopes her
readers will enjoy visiting a world very different from their own and will walk
away thinking, “That was a really good story!”

1 comment:

JACQUELINE

Based on a true story, "Jacqueline" is a tale of family, faith, unusual friendships, and the resiliency of the human spirit set against the backdrop of occupied Rennes in 1944. With the drama of fiction and the authenticity of personal history, "Jacqueline" is both a story about family and a family's story.

PROJECT JUNE BUG

Take an intimate peek behind the faculty room door and an unforgettable journey into the world of ADHD

About Me

I'm currently a columnist for The Island Reporter, a publication serving the South Gulf Beaches in St. Petersburg, Florida. My Florida Authors series features articles based on exclusive interviews with some of the state’s best writers. My “Pride & Joy” column
profiles individuals who give back to their communities through volunteerism.
I'm also the author of two novels."Project June Bug" is the story of a young teacher’s efforts to help a student with ADHD. It has received 12 awards, including Premier Book Awards “2009 Book of the Year.” My latest novel, "Jacqueline,"(published by Anaiah Press) is a middle grade historical based on an experience my dad, a WWII veteran, had while stationed in France shortly after D-day. Four of my stories have appeared in "Chicken Soup for the Soul" editions.
I live on Treasure Island (yes, it's as beautiful as it sounds), with my husband and two rather noisy macaws. In my spare time, I enjoy reading, walking on the beach, and visiting family in New Jersey, where I'm the proud "Grammy" of six beautiful grandchildren (with the pictures to prove it!)